To Be or Not to Be [Grateful]: Epistemologies of Belonging to a “Host-Home”

Abstract

I approach life writing as one of the most prominent forms of microhistory narratives which questions the grand narratives of history produced internationally and locally. Focusing on a transnational Iranian background woman writer, I argue that lived-experience narratives, despite their contradictions and the politics of publication, which has placed them into the category of “misery narratives”, are still epistemically value-laden and they need to be carefully and empathetically read. I draw on feminist phenomenology and use an intersectional methodology to study Dina Nayeri’s Refuge (2017) and her autobiographical article “The Ungrateful Refugee”, which mostly reflect on the experiences of border crossing and home making in relation to asylum seekers as marginalized identities. Focusing on multiple voices in this memoir, I show how asylum seekers coming from different social locations practise homemaking and create a sense of belonging to “home” in a host country that is not very hospitable towards them. I study the intersections of homeland, identity and politics, using life writing as an epistemology which sheds light on the questions of belonging.